[FOSTEL-List] Re: Structuring the FOSTEL summit

[Dave Neary]

Hi Craig,

I guess we should continue this discussion on fostel-list at fostel.org.

I'll leave the history in place for those joining us for the first time.

Craig Southeren wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:22:58 +0100
> Dave Neary <dave.neary at wengo.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hi all,
>>
>> After discussions and suggestions, I would like to have the following
>> format for the summit, rather than the 100% freeform thing.
>>
>> Each day will start with a presentationon some general aspect of the
>> summit (IM, VoIP or telephony). After that, we will have a 10-minute
>> organisation of BOF sessions, one per stream, with a focus specific to
>> that area. Session leaders will be chosen, and will lead the sessions
>> for 90 minutes to 2 hours (of course, sessions can stop at any time they
>> are no longer useful, or change into a session on another topic).
>>
>> After lunch, we will open the afternoon with another presentation,
>> followed by another 3 hours freeform sessions, with topics and session
>> leaderschosen after the talk.
>>
>> Finally, we will all get together at the day end for a one-our recap of
>> the day's BOFs - each session leader will give a presentation, maximum
>> 10 minutes, on the major points to come out of the session, and the
>> concrete actions to carry forward from the conference.
>>
>> I think this format balances nicely the dynamic of giving everyone an
>> overview of the topics facing the sector, and providing a forum where
>> productive collaboration can be encouraged.
>>
>> Does anyone have any feedback on this?
> 
> I would like to propose a different organisation that is more like we
> have had previously.
> 
> Rather than having a few big BOF sessions, I would propose having
> smaller, but more, presentations on specific topics or projects
> throughout the summit. The idea is to offer a wider scope of topics, and
> to provide attendees with the choice of either attending a presentation
> or spending time spend with other attendees.
> 
> I think it reasonable that each major project should be prepared to
> provide at least one presentation on their work. Over two days we should
> be able to get at least 10 presentations on a single stream, and that
> would require no more than one hour from any one team.
> 
> We could leave a few slots on the second day free for topics that are
> raised by the attendees during the first day.
> 
> Note that this organisation requires that the venue have seperate
> presentation and collaboration area(s). I would expect the collaboration
> area(s) to be filled with people and computers either coding in groups
> or talking. People attend presentations when and as they want to. 
> 
> In the past, the collaboration areas have been active until very late at
> night, and contain large numbers of empty beer cans every morning :)

We're likely to be constrained by the facilities - we're not going to be
in conference facilities in a hotel (that's a possibility, but I don't
think our budget will hold up to it). We will be in a university, which
we will get for next to free (we will have to pay for security,
probably). I'm also not sure yet how many meeting rooms we will have in
addition to the lecture theatre.

That means that we won't be able to stay there very late.

However, we will have several rooms we can break out into, and I really
like the idea of having convergence sessions where we will have most of
the attendees together. This format worked really well last year -
everyone got a high-level view of what was going on elsewhere, and for
smaller projects, we had a lightning talks session which fulfilled every
goal you hope for from lightning talks - most people were at them, and
we got 12 5-minute presentations, which let people have interesting
conversations and BOFs afterwards. Perhaps having one hour for lightning
talks might be the best way to address the concern you have and give all
the participating projects a say - otherwise we will spend the whole two
days in conference sessions, or the talks which are given will be poorly
attended.

I prefer to have a small number of high-quality interesting talks and
then get out of the way and let people have conversations.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
OpenWengo Community Development Manager
Email: dave.neary at wengo.com